Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Ain’t No Mountain Si Enough

This past weekend, my friend Matt Hollingsworth convinced me to run with his team in the Mount Si Relay. I wanted to get in some good tempo efforts on the run leading up to Wildflower and the relay let me do a 6-mile effort and a 7.1-mile effort about 2 hours apart. I was feeling rather beat up all day after only getting 6 hours of sleep on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. (Yes, I know that 6 isn’t all that bad by regular-people standards but I’m high maintenance. When I’m training a lot I need to sleep a lot!) Luckily Heath, or team captain, had brought plenty of snacks to keep us fueled throughout the day.

I probably ate half a bag of Baked Cheetos.

I had some difficulties with my first run. Heath was running before me and his leg was cut short. The organizers had given us a note outlining the last-minute changes but all of us had neglected to read it. So I was warming up a hundred yards away from the exchange point when Heath ran in. Oops! Then I followed a runner who was running a different leg of the relay and lost another minute. Double oops!! Hopefully I’ve used up all of my mistakes in a more casual race and I’ll execute better at my major races.

Matt and I figured out a great way to transfer momentum when doing a relay hand-off. Think about the Madison exchange in velodrome racing … or think “ring around the rosie:”

I would run it at top speed and loop arms with Matt, spin around in a circle and fling him off in the general direction of his leg of the relay.

After the race we took advantage of the weather (70+ degrees!) and scenery for a team photo-op in front of the race’s namesake, Mount Si. From right to left, ultra-runner Stephanie, team captain Heath, yours truly, Matt Hollingsworth and Dan Haffner. Matt, Dan and I had run this race together once before a few years back.

Thanks to my brother Matt for the fashion influence that led to me wearing pajama pants post-race. Thanks also to my mom’s friend Sarah for the pants!